New User Community 0.7 is almost done and I’m now on a deep testing phase before releasing it. On this version, some new strings have been included and need to be translated. If you have already translated the plugin and want to update the translation, you can download the development version, and send me te updated translation to be included at release time (This is planned for June, 2).  If you need more time to update your translation, tell me and it will be included on a later revision.

Also, if you plan to translate the plugin to a new language, you can contact me to take this into consideration. Also contact me if you need help with the translation.

Releasing the 0.6 branch of User Community introduced some bugs that are being corrected and fixed. Some of the releases in this branch had some blocking bugs that caused serious bad behavior and needed an urgent update and release to solve them. This has been caused by a poorly tested new internal design to allow components activation/deactivation.

In my opinion, it’s not a good idea to release new major features until all this minor remaining issues have been completely solved and fixed. Because of that, I’m focused now in making the components activation/deactivation feature more stable and robust. I want to have a bug free base before introducing features planed for 0.7 and 0.8. , as the planned features rely on components activation or deactivation.

This activation/deactivation feature, a really deep test on all this features, and to completely finish some current features that are not fully implemented, will be set as the 0.7 milestone. Features currently for 0.7 and 0.8, will be placed one milestone later, so them will be on 0.8 and 0.9.

I know that some of you are really waiting for the planed features, but also I’m sure that you prefer have a more stable and bug free plugin. Also, check routines and plans are being changed to perform the relase test and debug deeper and to ensure that a new release does not have as many bugs as have been found on 0.6 branch.

I’m sure you will understand this, and you will agree with me that this is the best way to provide you with a better and more stable and well tested plugin.

If you updated the plugin to the 0.6.1 version, You may have noticed two bugs introduced in 0.6 branch:

1) The plugin components get deactivated during the update. You have to manually activate the components again. http://alkivia.org/tracker/view.php?id=110

2) Plugin capabilities are reset to defaults and set all capabilities to all roles. So if you changed the capabilities, you’ll have to do it again, as all users will have all capabilities after updating. http://alkivia.org/tracker/view.php?id=111

A bugfix has been released as 0.6.2

On the Chameleon theme, you can allow your users to change styles (or color palettes). To do this, just activate the option Users can switch styles? on the theme settings page. Then, you users can switch color palettes by adding the style to the request:

• http://yoursite.com/?theme-style=red
• http://yoursite.com/page_id=123&theme-style=orange

Note that the style (or palette) name, is a valid name as shown in the settings page. (It is no case sensitive)

User community 0.6 is here. A new release for the User Community plugin with some new features. In this release you will find this new features or improvements:

Registered users only.

You can make the community visible to registered users only. Users will have to register and login to see the profiles pages. Not logged in users will see a warning page and redirected to the WordPress login.

Pictures moderation

Users pictures can be moderated.  By using WordPress C¡capabilities, you can now moderate the pictures for a user role (By default, all roles are moderated). You just have to remove the akuc_unmmoderated capability from those roles you want to moderate. To manage capabilities you will need the Capability Manager plugin or any other plugin to manage WordPress capabilities. (Administrator will receibe an email every time a picture needs moderation).

Force image upload

Show pictures only to users whohave uploaded a picture (an this picture has been approved). If you set this, when a user with no uploaded pictures looks at other’s profiles, the picture will be replaced with a message telling him that a picture upload is needed. This will help you to force users to upload a pictures. Combined with the pictures moderation, your users will upload more valid images.

Captions

Now users can set a caption for the pictures, and this caption will be shown in the user gallery.

New admin links

When an administrator is browsing profiles or galleries, now will have a link to edit the user or manage the gallery.

Comments author links

You can replace the comments author link to the user profile page. By default, comments authors are linked to their site. With this you will maintain the users on your site and prevent leaving it by clicking the comments author link.

Posts Author link

The link for posts author’s has been corrected. In the profile page, an option has been added to show a link to all posts from an author (almost all themes support this). This link will send the user to an archive page with all author’s posts (This feature is provided by WordPress core).

Widgets for recent…

Now, you have three available widgets to show latest activity on your site. This widgets are:

• Last registered users (Provided by login component). Shows a list of  latest registered users.
• Last user accesses (Provided by login component). Shows a list of users that recently accessed a site’s page.
• Last gallery updates (Provided by Gallery component). Shows a list of users that recently have uploaded an approved picture.

This widgets need some activity information not present in previous plugin versions. This informacion will start to be collected when updating the plugin to 0.6.

And more you will not see

Also, some code desing changes have been made to prepare the Community plugin to be extended. Many filter and action hooks have been implemented and some PHP classes have been developed to create new components. Next week I will write some pages on the plugin documentation about this hooks and how developers can use it.

Are you using any of the Alkivia Plugins? Do you use the Chameleon Theme ? Now is time to help us to promote them. Just go to the WordPress page for the plugin or theme and rate it.

This will help us not only to promote the plugin or theme, it will help also to others to know there is people who uses and liked it. Hope you can take a minute to rate it and help us!